Each September, my mind turns to two of my favorite icons of the season: one filled with color, the other neutral grays. The first of these is the flaming color of aspens, bigtooth maples, and the myriad shrubby understory. The second is a flock of migrating sandhill cranes. From the ground below, they seem to blink on and off like rotating beacons wheeling ever higher in the autumnal light. In one position, their undersides are shadowed and dark, and their silhouettes stand out against the clouds and pale blue sky. As they move along their upward spiral, the dark dissolves into silvery light and the birds disappear, as if absorbed into the sky.
The alternation between their dark and sunlit aspects is a thing of wonder and beauty, so I’m not sure why it later brings to my mind the dark and lighter periods of human history and the way they alternate. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been reading a bit too much medieval European history. Perhaps it is because, in addition to the autumnal darkening, we seem to be living in a period whose socio-political darkness feels deeper by the day, rivaling that of warring kings and religion-sponsored cruelty of the past. The bombing of innocents in Ukraine and Gaza, the rise of authoritarians in countries around the world, the us-versus-them mentality that seems to penetrate life as the first quarter of the 21st century comes to a close; all of these trouble my mind.
We could take a lesson from the cranes. Their calls reach great distances as they signal one another for migration. A swoop, as a group of sandhill cranes is known, of six is soon joined by seven more while another, too distant to count, can be heard nearby. They meet and seamlessly take their positions as if mounting an invisible spiral staircase — up and around, up and around. They are teammates, relatives, dancers in an ancient choreography in which there is no place for bickering. Why don’t we choose their way, one based on necessary cooperation and group effort, for we have demonstrated that we know how. It’s why our species survived beyond its uncertain dawn. In current times, unlike the cranes, we can’t agree on where we are going.
Light-hearted times, when we have plenty, are too often frittered away in trivia: celebrity weddings, the new jewelry store on the town square, the constant background noise of advertising. The longer our periods of ease, the more decadent we become and the less we seem to think about what is most important. With artificial intelligence uncapped, like a genie from the bottle, we may come to regret the wishes we are granted. We don’t see what lies ahead, but we hurdle forward regardless.
We can leave behind some wisdom, so those who replace us may know that we ran our course through light and dark and tried to run it well.
In the same way, dark times have a way of becoming ever darker. Once wickedness and vitriol begins to grow in a community, it’s hard to hold it back; until it’s too late to avoid its devastating culmination. Witness the world wars of the last century that devastated nations and destroyed countless lives. Like well-trained horses, dark times must run their course.
Wearing rags and ash, survivors of these calamities emerge like rats from underground, too stunned to ask, “How did we get here? How did this happen so late in human history, at civilization’s peak?” For every generation believes they are the pinnacle, having only the rough-edged past to offer comparison. We’ve told ourselves for too long that it would never happen here; we aren’t like those ugly “others” on the far side of the pond.
Each generation sits on a temporary peak of progress and enlightenment, but it’s only one of many peaks, like the golden cities of the Amazon 3,000 years ago, the empires and kingdoms in which scholars argued and sculptors wrested perfect human forms from silent stone. There is no peak without surrounding valleys, no high crown of a wave without troughs in between.
Those who study the earth find comfort in the epochs during which volcanoes clogged the sky with dark and gritty gray, or the millions of years of Earth as ice globe encrusted in brilliant white from poles to equator. Once life emerged, it faced multiple worldwide extinction events, but afterward life came roaring back.
In the coming decades, we might heat the world toward a global desert or bring upon ourselves the cold and dark of what 20th-century prophets named “nuclear winter.” And, with hope and a look backward at our history, we might not.
We can start creating a more rational and heart-filled future now as we temper our tempers, selfishness and greed, and our hatred for others’ ways and creeds. We can cancel the bellicose influencers on social media and step out into the miraculous world that waits outside our doors. We can turn our care toward others, not only of our race but all the life that gives us life — the wildflowers and bees, the planet’s shredded shawl of green that gives us air to breathe. We can share this life with each other, like cranes relieving the leader on their southward V, like skiers taking turns breaking trail. We can leave behind some wisdom, so those who replace us may know that we ran our course through light and dark and tried to run it well.
Yesterday, I watched the cranes as they warbled their way skyward, counting 40 before they disappeared from sight. I stood a while watching the empty sky they left behind, their croaks and yodels still resounding against the mountainside. I wondered why our species will not learn what they have known for thousands of human lifetimes: that together, and only so, we progress, process and fly.
